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	Oblates 'Made Mistakes' in Caring for Young Offenders Irish Independent June 26, 2006 http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1640977&issue_id=14259 A SENIOR Oblate priest has admitted that the religious order made mistakes in its management of young offenders at its Daingean and Glencree reformatories. But in a reference to the recent clerical scandals, Fr Paul Byrne said that "at last the demonisation of good men is stopping". The day-to-day work of the order was centred in areas like Inchicore and Darndale, where Oblate priests worked unselfishly to improve the lives of families and the elderly, he said. Fr Byrne was delivering the homily at the Oblate church in Inchicore, Dublin, which is celebrating the coming to Ireland 150 years ago of the French-founded order that aims to care for the most needy in society. President Mary McAleese, who attended the Mass, unveiled a plaque to the railway workers who built the first Oblate church there in 1856. Fr Byrne said that 1,000 men of the Inchicore Works, who were employed by the Great Southern and Western Railway Company, built the wooden church in just 16 hours to accommodate 700 worshippers. "We should remember that they did so just nine years after the Great Famine," Fr Byrne said. The celebrant at the anniversary Mass was Fr William Steckling, the German-born world head of the Order, which operates in 65 countries and has 4,500 members. Earlier, in an interview with the Irish Independent, Fr Steckling said that he was unaware of many abuses by the Oblates in Ireland but that, if these happened, they were sorry for those who suffered. The order, he added, would accept the findings of the Child Abuse Commission if there were cases of abuse in reformatories run by them. Fr Steckling said that the main thrust of the order in Europe was to present the good news of Christ to a secularised society and to engage - in the spirit of its founder, St Eugene de Mazenod, the Bishop of Marseilles - with those most deprived in society. St Eugene said Mass in the first Oblate church and was a driving force in raising the then huge sum of 20,000 French francs to assist famine relief in Ireland, he said. On his arrival in Ireland on Friday, Fr Steckling officially opened an anti-drugs centre in Inchicore as one of a number of social initiatives organised by the Oblates. John Cooney
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